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By Joseph Mercola, M.D.

15 Jun 2021 – What does The New York Times and a majority of other legacy media have in common with Big Pharma? Answer: They’re largely owned by BlackRock and the Vanguard Group, the two largest asset management firms in the world. Moreover, it turns out these two companies form a secret monopoly that own just about everything else you can think of too. As reported in the featured video:

“The stock of the world’s largest corporations are owned by the same institutional investors. They all own each other. This means that ‘competing’ brands, like Coke and Pepsi aren’t really competitors, at all, since their stock is owned by exactly the same investment companies, investment funds, insurance companies, banks and in some cases, governments.

The smaller investors are owned by larger investors. Those are owned by even bigger investors. The visible top of this pyramid shows only two companies whose names we have often seen …They are Vanguard and BlackRock.

The power of these two companies is beyond your imagination. Not only do they own a large part of the stocks of nearly all big companies but also the stocks of the investors in those companies. This gives them a complete monopoly.

A Bloomberg report states that both these companies in the year 2028, together will have investments in the amount of 20 trillion dollars. That means that they will own almost everything.’”

Who Are the Vanguard?

The word “vanguard” means “the foremost position in an army or fleet advancing into battle,” and/or “the leading position in a trend or movement.” Both are fitting descriptions of this global behemoth, owned by globalists pushing for a Great Reset, the core of which is the transfer of wealth and ownership from the hands of the many into the hands of the very few.

Interestingly, Vanguard is the largest shareholder of BlackRock, as of March 2021.3,4 Vanguard itself, on the other hand, has a “unique” corporate structure that makes its ownership more difficult to discern. It’s owned by its various funds, which in turn are owned by the shareholders. Aside from these shareholders, it has no outside investors and is not publicly traded.5 As reported in the featured video:6,7

“The elite who own Vanguard apparently do not like being in the spotlight but of course they cannot hide from who is willing to dig. Reports from Oxfam and Bloomberg say that 1% of the world, together owns more money than the other 99%. Even worse, Oxfam says that 82% of all earned money in 2017 went to this 1%.

In other words, these two investment companies, Vanguard and BlackRock hold a monopoly in all industries in the world and they, in turn are owned by the richest families in the world, some of whom are royalty and who have been very rich since before the Industrial Revolution.”

While it would take time to sift through all of Vanguard’s funds to identify individual shareholders, and therefore owners of Vanguard, a quick look-see suggests Rothschild Investment Corp.8 and the Edmond De Rothschild Holding are two such stakeholders.9 Keep the name Rothschild in your mind as you read on, as it will feature again later.

The video above also identifies the Italian Orsini family, the American Bush family, the British Royal family, the du Pont family, the Morgans, Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, as Vanguard owners.

BlackRock/Vanguard Own Big Pharma

According to Simply Wall Street, in February 2020, BlackRock and Vanguard were the two largest shareholders of GlaxoSmithKline, at 7% and 3.5% of shares respectively.10 At Pfizer, the ownership is reversed, with Vanguard being the top investor and BlackRock the second-largest stockholder.11

Keep in mind that stock ownership ratios can change at any time, since companies buy and sell on a regular basis, so don’t get hung up on percentages. The bottom line is that BlackRock and Vanguard, individually and combined, own enough shares at any given time that we can say they easily control both Big Pharma and the centralized legacy media — and then some.

Why does this matter? It matters because drug companies are driving COVID-19 responses — all of which, so far, have endangered rather than optimized public health — and mainstream media have been willing accomplices in spreading their propaganda, a false official narrative that has, and still is, leading the public astray and fosters fear based on lies.

To have any chance of righting this situation, we must understand who the central players are, where the harmful dictates are coming from, and why these false narratives are being created in the first place.

As noted in Global Justice Now’s December 2020 report12 “The Horrible History of Big Pharma,” we simply cannot allow drug companies — “which have a long track record of prioritizing corporate profit over people’s health” — to continue to dictate COVID-19 responses.

In it, they review the shameful history of the top seven drug companies in the world that are now developing and manufacturing drugs and gene-based “vaccines” against COVID-19, while mainstream media have helped suppress information about readily available older drugs that have been shown to have a high degree of efficacy against the infection.

BlackRock/Vanguard Own the Media

When it comes to The New York Times, as of May 2021, BlackRock is the second-largest stockholder at 7.43% of total shares, just after The Vanguard Group, which owns the largest portion (8.11%).13,14

In addition to The New York Times, Vanguard and BlackRock are also the top two owners of Time Warner, Comcast, Disney and News Corp, four of the six media companies that control more than 90% of the U.S. media landscape.15,16

Needless to say, if you have control of this many news outlets, you can control entire nations by way of carefully orchestrated and organized centralized propaganda disguised as journalism.

If your head is spinning already, you’re not alone. It’s difficult to describe circular and tightly interwoven relationships in a linear fashion. The world of corporate ownership is labyrinthine, where everyone seems to own everyone, to some degree.

However, the key take-home message is that two companies stand out head and neck above all others, and that’s BlackRock and Vanguard. Together, they form a hidden monopoly on global asset holdings, and through their influence over our centralized media, they have the power to manipulate and control a great deal of the world’s economy and events, and how the world views it all.

Considering BlackRock in 2018 announced that it has “social expectations” from the companies it invests in,17 its potential role as a central hub in the Great Reset and the “build back better” plan cannot be overlooked.

Add to this information showing it “undermines competition through owning shares in competing companies” and “blurs boundaries between private capital and government affairs by working closely with regulators,” and one would be hard-pressed to not see how BlackRock/Vanguard and their globalist owners might be able to facilitate the Great Reset and the so-called “green” revolution, both of which are part of the same wealth-theft scheme.

BlackRock and Vanguard Own the World

BlackRock – The company that owns the world?

That assertion will become even clearer once you realize that this duo’s influence is not limited to Big Pharma and the media. Importantly, BlackRock also works closely with central banks around the world, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is a private entity, not a federal one.18,19 It lends money to the central bank, acts as an adviser to it, and develops the central bank’s software.

In all, BlackRock and Vanguard have ownership in some 1,600 American firms, which in 2015 had combined revenues of $9.1 trillion. When you add in the third-largest global owner, State Street, their combined ownership encompasses nearly 90% of all S&P 500 firms.

BlackRock/Vanguard also own shares of long list of other companies, including Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Alphabet Inc.21 As illustrated in the graphic of BlackRock and Vanguard’s ownership network below,22 featured in the 2017 article “These Three Firms Own Corporate America” in The Conversation, it would be near-impossible to list them all.

In all, BlackRock and Vanguard have ownership in some 1,600 American firms, which in 2015 had combined revenues of $9.1 trillion. When you add in the third-largest global owner, State Street, their combined ownership encompasses nearly 90% of all S&P 500 firms.

A Global Monopoly Few Know Anything About

To tease out the overarching influence of BlackRock and Vanguard in the global marketplace, be sure to watch the 45-minute-long video featured at the top of this article. It provides a wide-view summary of the hidden monopoly network of Vanguard- and BlackRock-owned corporations, and their role in the Great Reset. A second much shorter video (above) offers an additional review of this information.

How can we tie BlackRock/Vanguard — and the globalist families that own them — to the Great Reset? Barring a public confession, we have to look at the relationships between these behemoth globalist-owned corporations and consider the influence they can wield through those relationships. As noted by Lew Rockwell:

“When Lynn Forester de Rothschild wants the United States to be a one-party country (like China) and doesn’t want voter ID laws passed in the U.S., so that more election fraud can be perpetrated to achieve that end, what does she do?

She holds a conference call with the world’s top 100 CEOs and tells them to publicly decry as ‘Jim Crow’ Georgia’s passing of an anti-corruption law and she orders her dutiful CEOs to boycott the State of Georgia, like we saw with Coca-Cola and Major League Baseball and even Hollywood star, Will Smith.

In this conference call, we see shades of the Great Reset, Agenda 2030, the New World Order. The UN wants to make sure, as does [World Economic Forum founder and executive chairman Klaus] Schwab that in 2030, poverty, hunger, pollution and disease no longer plague the Earth.

To achieve this, the UN wants taxes from Western countries to be split by the mega corporations of the elite to create a brand-new society. For this project, the UN says we need a world government — namely the UN, itself.”

As I’ve reviewed in many previous articles, it seems quite clear that the COVID-19 pandemic was orchestrated to bring about this New World Order — the Great Reset — and the 45-minute video featured at top of article does a good job of explaining how this was done. And at the heart of it all, the “heart” toward which all global wealth streams flow, we find BlackRock and Vanguard.

Dr. Joseph Mercola is the founder of Mercola.com. An osteopathic physician, best-selling author and recipient of multiple awards in the field of natural health, his primary vision is to change the modern health paradigm by providing people with a valuable resource to help them take control of their health.

21 June 2021

Source: www.transcend.org

By Ramzy Baroud

14 Jun 2021 – On May 25, famous American actor, Mark Ruffalo, tweeted an apology for suggesting that Israel is committing ‘genocide’ in Gaza.

“I have reflected & wanted to apologize for posts during the recent Israel/Hamas fighting that suggested Israel is committing ‘genocide’,” Ruffalo wrote, adding, “It’s not accurate, it’s inflammatory, disrespectful & is being used to justify antisemitism here & abroad. Now is the time to avoid hyperbole.”

But were Ruffalo’s earlier assessments, indeed, “not accurate, inflammatory and disrespectful”? And does equating Israel’s war on besieged, impoverished Gaza with genocide fit into the classification of ‘hyperbole’?

To avoid pointless social media spats, one only needs to reference the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. According to Article 2 of the 1948 Convention, the legal definition of genocide is:

“Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part ..”

In its depiction of Israel’s latest war on Gaza, the Geneva-based human rights group Euro-Med Monitor reported:

“The Israeli forces directly targeted 31 extended families. In 21 cases, the homes of these families were bombed while their residents were inside. These raids resulted in the killing of 98 civilians, including 44 children and 28 women. Among the victims were a man and his wife and children, mothers and their children, or child siblings. There were seven mothers who were killed along with four or three of their children. The bombing of these homes and buildings came without any warning despite the Israeli forces’ knowledge that civilians were inside.”

As of May 28, 254 Palestinians in Gaza were killed and 1,948 were wounded in the latest 11-day Israeli onslaught, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Though tragic, this number is relatively small compared to the casualties of previous wars. For example, in the 51-day Israeli war on Gaza in the summer of 2014, over 2,200 Palestinians were killed and over 17,000 were wounded. Similarly, whole families, like the 25-member Abu Jame family in Khan Younis, also perished. Is this not genocide? The same logic can be applied to the killing of over 300 unarmed protesters at the fence separating besieged Gaza from Israel between March 2018 and December 2019. Moreover, the besiegement and utter isolation of over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza since 2006-07, which has resulted in numerous tragedies, is an act of collective punishment that also deserves the designation of genocide.

But one doesn’t need to be a legal expert to locate the many elements of genocide in Israel’s violent behavior, let alone language, against Palestinians. There is a clear, undeniable relationship between Israel’s violent political discourse and equally violent action on the ground. One of the rising stars of Israeli politics, Naftali Bennett, who has served the role of the defense minister, had, in July 2013, stated: “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there’s no problem with that.”

That context in mind, and regardless of why Ruffalo found it necessary to backtrack on his moral position, Israel is an unrepented human rights violator that continues to carry out an active policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the native, indigenous inhabitants of Palestine.

Language matters, and in this particular ‘conflict’, it matters most, because Israel has for long managed to escape any accountability for its actions, due to its success to misrepresent facts, and the overall truth about itself. Thanks to its many allies and supporters in mainstream media and academia, Tel Aviv has rebranded itself from being a military occupier and an apartheid regime to an ‘oasis of democracy’, in fact, ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’.

This article will not attempt to challenge the entirety of the misconstrued mainstream media’s depiction of Israel. Volumes are required for that, and Israeli Professor Ilan Pappé’s ‘Ten Myths about Israel’ is an important starting point. However, the article will attempt to present some basic definitions that must enter the Palestine-Israel lexicon, as a prerequisite to developing a fairer understanding of what is happening on the ground.

A Military Occupation – Not a ‘Conflict’

Quite often, mainstream Western media refers to the situation in Palestine and Israel as a ‘conflict’, and to the various specific elements of this so-called conflict as a ‘dispute’. For example, the ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict’ and the ‘disputed city of East Jerusalem’.

What should be an obvious truth is that besieged, occupied people do not engage in a ‘conflict’ with their occupiers. Moreover, a ‘dispute’ happens when two parties have equally compelling claims to any issue. When Palestinan families of East Jerusalem are being forced out of their homes, which are, in turn, handed over to Jewish extremists, there is no ‘dispute’ involved. The extremists are thieves and the Palestinians are victims. This is not a matter of opinion. The international community itself says so.

‘Conflict’ is a generic term. Aside from absolving the aggressor, in this case Israel, it leaves all matters open for interpretation. And since American audiences are indoctrinated to love Israel and hate Arabs and Muslims, siding with Israel in its ‘conflict’ with the latter becomes the only rational option.

Israel has sustained a military occupation of 22% of the total size of historic Palestine since June 1967. The remainder of the Palestinian homeland was already usurped, using extreme violence, state-sanctioned apartheid, and, as Pappé puts it, ‘incremental genocide’ decades earlier.

From an international law perspective, the term ‘military occupation’, ‘occupied East Jerusalem’, ‘illegal Jewish settlements’, and so forth, have never been ‘disputed’. They are simply facts, even if Washington has decided to ignore international law, and even if mainstream US media has chosen to manipulate the terminology, to present Israel as a victim, not the aggressor.

‘Process’ without ‘Peace’

The term ‘peace process’ has been coined by American diplomats decades ago. It was put to use throughout the mid and late 1970s when, then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger labored to broker a deal between Egypt and Israel with the hope of fragmenting the Arab political front and, eventually, sidelining Cairo entirely from the ‘Arab-Israeli conflict’.

Kissinger’s logic proved vital for Israel as the ‘process’ did not aim at achieving justice according to fixed criteria that have been delineated by the United Nations for years. There was no frame of reference anymore. If any existed, it was Washington’s political priorities, which historically almost entirely overlapped with Israel’s priorities. Despite the obvious American bias, the US bestowed upon itself the undeserved title of ‘the honest peace broker’.

This approach was used successfully in the write-up to the Camp David Accords in 1978. One of the Accords’ greatest achievements is that the so-called ‘Arab-Israeli conflict’ was replaced with the so-called ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict’.

Now, tried and true, the ‘peace process’ was used again in 1993, resulting in the Oslo Accords. For nearly three decades, the US continued to tout its self-proclaimed credentials as a peacemaker despite the fact that it pumped – and continues to do so – $3-4 billion of annual, mostly military, aid to Israel.

On the other hand, the Palestinians have little to show for. No peace was achieved; no justice was obtained; not an inch of Palestinian land was returned; and not a single Palestinian refugee was allowed to come home. However, American and European officials and a massive media apparatus continued to talk of a ‘peace process’ with little regard to the fact that the ‘peace process’ has brought nothing but war and destruction for Palestine, and allowed Israel to continue its illegal appropriation and colonization of Palestinian land.

Resistance, National Liberation – Not ‘Terrorism’ and ‘State-Building’

The ‘peace process’ introduced more than death, mayhem, and normalization of land theft in Palestine. It also wrought its own language, which remains in effect until this day. According to the new lexicon, Palestinians are divided into ‘moderate’ and ‘extremists’. The ‘moderates’ believe in the American-led ‘peace process’, ‘peace negotiations’ and are ready to make ‘painful compromises’ in order to obtain the coveted ‘peace’. On the other hand, the ‘extremists’ are ‘Iran-backed’, politically ‘radical’ bunch that use ‘terrorism’ to satisfy their ‘dark’ political agendas.

But is this the case? Since the signing of the Oslo Accords, many sectors of Palestinian society, including Muslims and Christians, Islamists and secularists, and notably socialists, resisted the unwarranted political ‘compromises’ undertaken by their leadership, which they perceived to be a betrayal of Palestinians’ basic rights. Meanwhile, the ‘moderates’ have largely ruled over Palestinians with no democratic mandate. This small but powerful group introduced a culture of political and financial corruption, unprecedented in Palestine. They applied torture against Palestinian political dissidents whenever it suited them. Not only did Washington say little to criticize the ‘moderate’ Palestinian Authority’s dismal human rights record, but it also applauded it for its crackdown on those who ‘incite violence’ and their ‘terrorist infrastructure’.

Such term as ‘resistance’ – muqawama – was slowly but carefully extricated from the Palestinian national discourse. The term ‘liberation’ too was perceived to be confrontational and hostile. Instead, such concepts as ‘state-building’ – championed by former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and others – began taking hold. The fact that Palestine was still an occupied country and that ‘state-building’ can only be achieved once ‘liberation’ was first secured, did not seem to matter to the ‘donor countries’. The priorities of these countries – mainly US allies who adhered to the American political agenda in the Middle East – was to maintain the illusion of the ‘peace process’ and to ensure that ‘security coordination’ between PA police and the Israeli army carried on unabated.

The so-called ‘security coordination’, of course, refers to the US-funded joint Israeli-PA efforts at cracking down on Palestinian resistance, apprehending Palestinian political dissidents and ensuring the safety of the illegal Jewish settlements, or colonies, in the occupied West Bank.

War and, Yes, Genocide in Gaza – Not ‘Israel-Hamas Conflict’

The word ‘democracy’ was constantly featured in the new Oslo language. Of course, it was not intended to serve its actual meaning. Instead, it was the icing on the cake of making the illusion of the ‘peace process’ perfect. This was obvious, at least to most Palestinians. But it also became obvious to the whole world in January 2006, when the Palestinian faction Fatah, which has monopolized the PA since its inception in 1994, lost the popular vote to the Islamic faction Hamas.

Hamas, and other Palestinian factions have rejected, and continue to reject, the Oslo Accords. Their participation in the legislative elections in 2006 took many by surprise, as the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) was itself a product of Oslo. Their victory in the elections, which was classified as democratic and transparent by international monitoring groups, threw a wrench in the US-Israeli-PA political calculations.

Lo and behold, the group that has long been perceived by Israel and its allies as ‘extremist’ and ‘terrorist’, became the potential leaders of Palestine. The Oslo spin doctors had to go to work and quickly so in order for them to thwart Palestinian democracy and ensure a successful return to the status quo, even if this means that Palestine is represented by unelected, undemocratic leaders. Sadly, this has been the case for nearly 15 years.

Meanwhile, Hamas’s stronghold, the Gaza Strip, had to be taught a lesson, thus the siege imposed on the impoverished region for nearly 15 years. The siege on Gaza has little to do with Hamas’s rockets or Israel’s ‘security’ needs, the right to ‘defend itself’, and its supposedly ‘justifiable’ desire to destroy Gaza’s ‘terrorist infrastructure’. While, indeed, Hamas’s popularity in Gaza is unmatched anywhere else in Palestine, Fatah too has a powerful constituency there. Moreover, the Palestinian resistance in the Strip is not championed by Hamas alone, but also by other ideological and political groups, for example, the Islamic Jihad, the socialist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and other socialist and secular groups.

Misrepresenting the ‘conflict’ as a ‘war’ between Israel and Hamas is crucial to Israeli propaganda, which has succeeded in equating between Hamas and militant groups throughout the Middle East and even Afghanistan. But Hamas is not ISIS, Al-Qaeda or Taliban. In fact, none of these groups are similar anyway. Hamas is a Palestinian Islamic nationalist movement that operates within a largely Palestinian political context. An excellent book on Hamas is the recently published volume by Daud Abdullah, Engaging the World. Abdullah’s book rightly presents Hamas as a rational political actor, rooted in its ideological convictions yet flexible and pragmatic in its ability to adapt to national, regional and international geopolitical changes.

But what does Israel have to gain from mischaracterizing the Palestinian resistance in Gaza? Aside from satisfying its propaganda campaign of erroneously linking Hamas to other anti-American groups, it also dehumanizes the Palestinian people entirely and presents Israel as a partner in the American global so-called ‘war on terror’. Israel neofascist and ultranationalist politicians then become the saviors of humanity, their violent racist language is forgiven and their active ‘genocide’ is seen as an act of ‘self-defense’ or, at best, a mere state of ‘conflict’.

The Victimizer as the Victim

According to the strange logic of mainstream media, Palestinians are rarely ‘killed’ by Israeli soldiers, but rather ‘die’ in ‘clashes’ resulting from various ‘disputes’. Israel doesn’t ‘colonize’ Palestinian land, it merely ‘annexes’, ‘appropriates’, and so on. What has been taking place in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in the occupied East Jerusalem, for example, is not outright property theft, leading to ethnic cleansing, but rather a ‘property dispute’.

The list goes on and on.

In truth, language has always been part of Zionist colonialism, long before the state of Israel was itself constructed from the ruins of Palestinian homes and villages in 1948. Palestine, according to the Zionists, was ‘a land with no people’ for ‘a people with no land’. These colonists were never ‘illegal settlers’ but ‘Jewish returnees’ to their ‘ancestral homeland’, who, through hard work and perseverance, managed to ‘make the desert bloom’, and, in order to defend themselves against the ‘hordes of Arabs’, they needed to build an ‘invincible army’.

But there can be no alternative to this feat, because, without proper, accurate and courageous understanding and depiction of Israeli settler colonialism and Palestinian resistance to it, Israel will continue to victimize Palestinians while presenting itself as the victim.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

21 June 2021

Source: www.transcend.org

By Paul Craig Roberts

15 Jun 2021 – The so-called Covid variants, officially designated as mutations, are being used to extend the British lockdown. However, Dr. Luc Montagnier, 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and former director of the Retrovirology Lab at the Pasteur Institute, reports that in fact it is the vaccinations that are producing the variants.

Dr. Montagnier says that an enormous mistake, an unacceptable mistake, a scientific and medical error has been made. The Covid vaccines are causing new variants that perpetuate the problem.

Dr. Montagnier said that epidemiologists know but are silent about the phenomenon, known as “Antibody-Dependent Enhancement” (ADE). Prof. Montagnier explained that the trend is happening in each country where “the curve of vaccination is followed by the curve of deaths.”

Montagnier’s point is supported by information in an open letter from a long list of medical doctors to the European Medicines Agency. The letter stated that “there have been numerous media reports from around the world of care homes being struck by COVID-19 within days of vaccination of residents.”

In a recent statement French Virologist Christine Rouzioux said: “the rise in new cases is occurring in vaccinated patients in nursing homes in ‘Montpellier, in the Sarte, in Rheims, in the Moselle.”

I am concerned that the mistakes made by public health bureaucrats, or the deceptions in which they have engaged, have become too serious to be acknowledged and that the dangerous vaccines will continue to be administered.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.

21 June 2021

Source: www.transcend.org

By M K Bhadrakumar

This may seem a paradox but the truth is that the United States does not realise that Iran’s presidential election result — the resounding victory of the conservative head of the judiciary Ebrahim Raisi — can be an optimal outcome.

Raisi has impeccable credentials as a hardliner who belongs to the powerful religious establishment and happens to be a genuinely popular public figure with whom the West can do business with.

Some skeptics might say Raisi is under US sanctions for his involvement in the 1988 mass execution of prisoners. In the anti-Iranian folklore, hundreds of detainees were executed. But few would know what really happened.

It is no secret that Washington encouraged Saddam Hussein to wage his war on Iran, taking advantage of the apparent disorder and isolation of the new Islamic government in Tehran —then at loggerheads with the US over the seizure of the American embassy —and of the demoralisation and dissolution of Iran’s regular armed forces.

But the revolutionary regime fought back and Saddam was finally forced to seek a peace agreement with Iran. It was a brutal war. Estimates of total casualties range from 1-2 million.

But then, after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini accepted a UN-brokered cease-fire in 1988, members of the terrorist group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), based in Iraq and heavily armed by Saddam, and enjoying the backing of the CIA, stormed across the Iranian border in a surprise attack. Iran smashed the MEK assault and that set the stage for the so-called “death commissions” of the prisoners, terrorists and others.

Inevitably, those executed included agents of the western intelligence. The executions couldn’t have been carried out except on Khomeini’s orders. Now, Raisi was a young man of 27 when he reportedly served on a revolutionary panel involved in sentencing Iran’s enemies to death.

Interestingly, 31 years later, when Washington sanctioned Raisi, it was as part of a series of post-JCPOA sanctions in 2019. The Trump administration sanctioned Supreme Leader Khamenei, his office and those closely affiliated with his access to key financial resources (June 2019); Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (July 2019); and the core inner circle of advisers to the Supreme Leader including one of his sons, Mojtaba Khamenei, the newly appointed head of Iran’s judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi, the supreme leader’s chief of staff, Mohammadi Golpayegani, and others (November 2019.)

The good part is that the sanctions against Raisi and other Iranian leaders were part of a diabolical plot to complicate the US-Iranian standoff. Clearly, once those who plotted are no more there, the Biden administration can lift those sanctions.

In fact, it should. For, President-elect Raisi will make just the interlocutor that the White House needs to implement any agreement reached in Vienna.

The US analysts keep grumbling that the “reformists” in Iran got a bad deal in the list of candidates for the presidential election. But Raisi has won a resounding victory.

In the 2017 election, Raisi received 38.28% of votes; vote share has now increased to 61.95%, an aggregate increase of 2.1 million votes. Two factors contributed to this outcome.

First, the voter turnout reportedly dropped from around 70% four years back to around 50% in the present election. Second, Raisi’s popularity has been genuinely on a rising curve ever since he took over as the chief justice in 2019 and launched a high-profile anti-corruption drive. This needs some explanation.

Public corruption is a major issue in Iran’s public discourses in the recent years. Raisi figures today as the champion of probity in public life and that holds appeal to the average Iranian voter.

This is where America’s analysts lose the plot. Iran’s presidential election has been held concurrently with the 6th Islamic city and village council elections and they focused on the country’s political economy — and not about the United States.

Now, Raisi is well-versed with the phenomenon of bonyads (meaning “Foundations”), the charioteers of corruption in Iran’s political system. The bonyads are supposedly charitable trusts exempt from taxes and enjoying huge state subsidies that play a major role in Iran’s non-oil economy and account for over one-fifth of the country’s GDP, but are notorious for siphoning off production to the lucrative black market and provide only limited and inadequate charity to the poor.

Raisi held the position of chairman of Astan Quds Razavi, a bonyad based in Mashhad, from 2016 to 2019 until his appointment as the chief justice. The Astan Quds Razavi is the administrative organisation which manages the fabulously wealthy Imam Reza shrine and various institutions. In reality, it is a huge conglomerate that runs auto plants, agricultural businesses, and many other enterprises, owns most of the real estate in Mashhad and rents out shop space to bazaars and hoteliers, etc.

Now, Raisi’s main political programme as president will focus on the economic malaise gripping the country, which is inextricably linked to corruption. It will be interesting to see how Raisi tackles the bonyads.

With the lifting of western sanctions, for the first time since the 1979 revolution, Iran’s so-called “resistance economy” is at crossroads. Significantly, Raisi launched his election campaign at the grand Tehran bazaar.

The Biden administration should try to understand that in Raisi it has a leader who is as much committed to the ongoing nuclear negotiations in Vienna as President Rouhani has been. In fact, the conservatives generally support the lifting of western sanctions so that Iran’s full potential for growth and development can be realised. Conceivably, Raisi may choose to depend on Iran’s chief negotiator at Vienna, Abbas Araqchi.

This is where analysts with zero sum mindset miss the wood for the tree. Raisi himself has been a member of the Supreme National Security Council and contributed to the making of the country’s grand strategies on the foreign policy arena.

The Biden administration should expect continuity in Iran’s policies under Raisi. This may not necessarily mean that strengthening of ties with the West will be Raisi’s top priority. Iran pursues a multi-vector foreign policy.

But where Raisi scores over Rouhani is that he has an established reputation as hardliner. In the prevailing political milieu in Iran where Rouhani’s “reformist” agenda stands thoroughly discredited and with the locus of domestic politics distinctly shifting to the conservatives — as manifest in the last election to the Majlis — Raisi’s ascendence makes the regime more cohesive than before.

Equally, it is reassuring that any agreement negotiated in Vienna is followed through. Having said that, much will depend on the Biden administration’s far-sightedness to craft an Iran policy that dovetails with Raisi’s economic programme.

1989 belongs to the world of yesterday. Also, do not expect Iran to jettison Velayat-e faqih, the country’s chosen system of Islamic governance. America cannot possibly impose its exceptionalism on a “civilisation state” such as Iran.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar served the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years.

21 June 2021

Source: countercurrents.org

By Hadeel Al Gherbawi

“During the recent offensive on the Gaza Strip, our parishioners flocked to churches for refuge. We turned our churches into shelters. At the Holy Family Roman Catholic Latin Church, we would pray to God every day during the aggression for protection and safety,” Yousef Asaad, the assistant pastor at the Holy Family Church in Gaza, told Al-Monitor.

“Everyone was targeted in Gaza during the aggression. Israel does not differentiate between Muslims or Christians. We were all at risk. The aggression did not spare places of worship. Although deemed part of Gaza’s historical heritage and of cultural value, these premises were targeted or damaged due to the bombing of surrounding areas. Prayers and rituals were interrupted by the intensity of the strikes. Worshipers were afraid to reach the church. We moved to other facilities affiliated with the church, such as the Rosary Sisters School or even to the homes of our parishioners to hold prayers,” Asaad continued.

He said that the Rosary Sisters School was the most affected by the fighting. “The school building sustained major cracks that might mean the demolition of some of it. Also the event hall, the sound lab, computers and the solar power unit there were destroyed, in addition to cracks in the Holy Family Church.”

Asaad noted that the church is constantly working to provide support and assistance to affected and poor families in the area. “The Latin Church aims to serve the poor and needy people regardless of their religion. After the war, we started a program of entertainment and recreation for parishioners, especially children, to help them overcome fear and make them feel safe again. The program included prayers, game sessions, psychological release activities and visits to tourism sites. The Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, is scheduled to visit [Gaza] from June 14 to 17. This will raise the morale of the parishioners.”

According to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Latin Church community numbers 130 individuals in the entire Gaza Strip, out of about 1,130 total Christians.

Several international conventions and treaties protect Palestinian cultural heritage, including the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. However, Israel repeatedly ignores international law and has been repeatedly accused of working to obliterate the features of Palestinian identity and heritage.

Not far from the Latin Church in Gaza City lies the Great Omari Mosque (also known as the Great Mosque of Gaza), the oldest mosque in the Gaza Strip and the second oldest in Palestine. The imam who leads the noon and afternoon prayers there, Nabil Berzek, said the mosque remained in operation during the latest fighting, but the number of worshipers declined dramatically.

Berzek told Al-Monitor that in the Great Omari Mosque, like in other mosques in the Gaza Strip, the Maghrib and Isha prayers were combined to allow worshipers to stay home after Maghrib to protect them from Israeli airstrikes.

Berzek added, “We made sure to perform the call to prayer and hold prayers in a message to Israel that it did not prevent us from performing our religious rituals. We even held two Friday prayers during the aggression, but our sermons were short and the number of attendees was limited. Several funeral ceremonies were held at the mosque for victims that fell during the fighting round, including 19 from the Kawlak family.”

He explained, “The Great Omari Mosque, located in the heart of the old city of Gaza, was built about 2,000 years ago as a pagan temple, but it was converted to a church in 406 AD. In the seventh century AD, Muslims turned it into a mosque after the conquest of the city. It is the second largest mosque in Palestine after the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.”

A Byzantine church that was discovered in 1998 near the northern Gaza Strip town of Jabalia was one of the heritage sites recently hit by Israeli artillery. The church was partially damaged during the Israeli invasion in 2003, and was severely damaged during the 2014 war.

The nonprofit Emergency First International began to restore the church in 2018 under the supervision of the Palestinian Ministry of Culture and Antiquities, but the Israeli strikes have destroyed the work.

Director-General of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage at the Ministry of Tourism in Gaza Jamal Abu Rid denounced Israel’s direct and indirect targeting of antiquities. He described these attacks as part of Israel’s plan to blur the identity of the Palestinian land to justify the idea that Palestine is a land without people and a people without a land.

Abu Rida told Al-Monitor that the Byzantine church site was severely damaged, saying, “This shows the severity of the airstrike and that Israel intended to inflict great damage to the archaeological site. The site has been undergoing restoration, maintenance and excavation since 2018, which has so far cost $2 million in external funding.”

He explained that the wall between the Katib al-Wilaya Mosque and the historic Church of Saint Porphyrius was hit in the bombing, damaging the mosque and church. Work is now underway to rebuild the wall.

The Church of Saint Porphyrius, one of the oldest churches in Gaza, is built around two huge marble columns. The church was named after St. Porphyrius, who was buried in it.

Katib al-Wilaya Mosque was built under Sultan Al-Nasir Muhammad bin Qalawun in 1432 AD. It was built in what used to be the administrative offices of St. Porphyrius Orthodox Church, which gave that space to Muslims to build a mosque adjacent to the church in a sign of coexistence and tolerance.

Al-Zawiya market is one the oldest markets in the Gaza Strip. Built during the Mamluk era, it attests to the various past civilizations that existed in Gaza throughout the ages. Its shops attract large crowds of visitors, especially on occasions and holidays, with an assortment of products like leather goods, perfumes, food supplies, sweets and gold jewelry. Economists often cite the commercial activity in the market as an economic indicator.

Gazans from all over the Strip visit the market to see its antique historical features, which include domes and arches dating back to the medieval Islamic ages.

In the middle of the month of Ramadan, the Gaza Strip relaxed the coronavirus restrictions imposed on markets. Merchants and sellers stocked up on goods in anticipation of Eid al-Fitr, but the Eid festivities were halted by the Israeli offensive. Merchants ended with heavy losses as shops were forced to close down.

Hiam Bitar, a researcher at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in Gaza, told Al-Monitor, “Israel is trying to destroy every ancient site it cannot control. In every aggression on Gaza, ancient sites are severely targeted. A large number of architectural monuments and sites were destroyed or damaged by Israel in the past years, such as Mahkamah Mosque and Al-Thafar Damri Mosque. This is in addition to the damage to ancient houses in the Zeitoun neighborhood, al-Balakhiya archaeological site, The Great Omari Mosque, the Tell el-Sakan archeological site, Tal Umm Amer, which contains the ruins of the St Hilarion monastery, and others. Most recently, Israel targeted the Byzantine Church in the northern Gaza Strip.”

Bitar went on, “As a result of the offensive, archaeological sites were almost completely abandoned as missions and public visits stopped,” noting that antiquities in Gaza also suffer from the Israeli siege imposed on Gaza that prevents much excavation, restoration and maintenance work.

In bombing the Gaza Strip, Israel has once again completely disregarded the international agreements and conventions that protect Palestinian antiquities and heritage sites.

Hadeel Al Gherbawi is a freelance journalist from the Gaza Strip. She has a degree in English language literature and journalism.

20 June 2021

Source: www.al-monitor.com

Several Israeli military vehicles invaded, on Monday morning, Palestinian agricultural lands, east of Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.

Media sources said six armored bulldozers and two Merkava vehicles advanced dozens of meters into the Palestinian farmlands east of the al-Fakhari town, east of Khan Younis.

They added that the army bulldozed and uprooted the lands, especially the sections close to the perimeter fence, while military drones flew overhead.

The attack is part of frequent Israeli violations against the Palestinians, especially the fishermen, farmers, shepherds, and workers in the besieged and impoverished Gaza Strip, and have led to dozens of casualties, including fatalities, in addition to serious property damage and the confiscation of many boats after abducting the fishermen.

21 June 2021

Source: imemc.org

By Aaron Boxerman

A meeting between Hamas and United Nations envoy Tor Wennesland to strengthen the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel went poorly, Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, said on Monday.

The UN official recently arrived in the Gaza Strip in an attempt to stabilize the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Gaza-based Palestinian terror groups.

Both sides have violated the truce in recent days: Palestinians have launched incendiary balloons into Israeli territory, torching swaths of open land, and Israel has responded with airstrikes against Hamas targets.

“It was a bad meeting. It was not positive at all, and we clarified to the [United Nations] delegation that we would hold a meeting of Islamic and national factions in Gaza to decide our next steps,” Sinwar told reporters following the meeting.

“It seems that the occupation did not get our people’s message,” added Sinwar, referring to Israel.

Wennesland’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hamas has demanded that Israel lift tightened restrictions on the Gaza Strip in exchange for continued calm, as well as permit Gaza to rebuild after the 11-day battle between Israel and the terror group.

Israel has maintained tighter than usual restrictions on the coastal enclave since the end of the operation. Defense Minister Benny Gantz has said a full lifting of restrictions will not take place until two Israeli civilians that Hamas is holding, along with the bodies of two Israeli soldiers, are returned to Israel.

Sinwar said Israel is “trying to extort us, the Palestinian people, the Palestinian resistance, when it comes to lifting [the restrictions] on our people.”

During the recent round of fighting between Israel and Hamas in May, Israel shut down all the crossings with the Gaza Strip. Only a few exceptions were made for specific aid convoys to enter the coastal enclave during the fighting. Gaza-based terror groups bombarded some of the convoys, wounding one Israeli soldier, the Israeli military said.

Israel has eased a few of the restrictions since the 11 days of fighting. Gazans seeking medical care were allowed to leave the enclave for treatment in hospitals in Israel and in the West Bank.

But Israel still maintains tight control over goods that enter and leave the Strip. Defense Minister Benny Gantz has said that Israel will not permit a full reconstruction of Gaza — with the resulting influx of materials — without the return of two Israeli civilian captives and the bodies of two Israeli soldiers currently held by Hamas.

Hamas, for its part, has rejected any connection between the reconstruction of Gaza and a potential prisoner exchange with Israel.

On Monday morning, the Israeli government relaxed some of the restrictions, allowing the export of textiles and agricultural produce from the Gaza Strip to Israel and the West Bank.

But an official in the Hamas-run Gaza Crossings Authority stressed that the situation had yet to return to the pre-war status quo.

“The opening [of the crossing] is only partial,” Crossings Authority Director-General Rami Abu Rish said in a statement.

21 June 2021

Source: www.timesofisrael.com

Hamas has said that it will prioritise the release of senior Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti in any prisoner exchange deal with Israel. This was revealed after a meeting between the head of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement’s political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, and Fadwa Barghouti, the wife of the 62-year-old who is entering his 20th year in an Israeli prison.

Haniyeh spoke with Barghouti’s wife in the presence of several prominent leaders of the movement earlier this month in Cairo. A senior Hamas source who was present at the meeting told Al-Monitor that Haniyeh has prioritised Barghouti’s release. Fadwa Barghouti received assurances that her husband will be at the top of the list in any future prisoner exchange deal with Israel.

According to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Haniyeh and Egyptian officials discussed the possibility of a new deal with Israel. The Egyptian mediators believe that the time is not yet ripe to make progress in talks with the Israelis, and suggested postponing the issue until the new government gets to work.

It’s not at all clear, however, if the government led by far-right nationalist Naftali Bennett will be open to a prisoner swap. He is even more extreme than his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I think the new Israeli prime minister, who is known for saying that terrorists should be killed and not released, will be more cautious about concluding an exchange deal that might result in the release of prisoners who have a history of planned military operations that killed many Israelis,” said Talal Oka of Al-Ayyam newspaper.

Hamas claims that it holds four Israeli soldiers who were captured during the 2014 Israeli onslaught against the Gaza Strip during which over 2,200 Palestinians were killed, and over 17,000 were wounded. Israel, however, questions that figure. It also continues to hold 4,500 Palestinians in its prisons.

Barghouti is seen as a natural successor to 85-year-old Mahmoud Abbas and the ideal person to unite the Palestinian political factions. According to recent polls he is the most popular Palestinian leader, which means that he would stand a good chance of winning a presidential election. That, though, could work against him. Critics argue that one of the means by which Israel can sustain its brutal occupation is to keep Palestinians divided politically and geographically.

21 June 2021

Source: middleeastmonitor.com

In a damning indictment of Israel’s genocidal policies in the occupied West Bank, two former Israeli envoys have termed the regime’s occupation as “apartheid,” drawing parallels with pre-1994 South Africa where racial segregation was legalized.

In an article published in a South African news website, former ambassadors Ilan Baruch and Alon Liel said the situation between Palestine and the Israeli regime was one of “inherent inequality.”

“For over half a century, Israel has ruled over the occupied Palestinian territories with a two-tiered legal system, in which, within the same tract of land in the West Bank, Israeli settlers live under Israeli civil law while Palestinians live under military law,” they wrote in a joint Op-Ed.

The former ambassadors said the Israeli regime has “worked to change both the geography and the demography” of the West Bank through the construction of illegal settlements.

“This has happened alongside the expropriation and takeover of massive amounts of Palestinian land, including Palestinian home evictions and demolitions. That is, settlements are built and expanded at the expense of Palestinian communities, which are forced onto smaller and smaller tracts of land,” they noted in the scathing article.

Referring to the then-minister of military affairs of the Israeli regime, Ariel Sharon, to South Africa in the early 1980s, when Sharon had “expressed great interest” in South Africa’s Bantustan project, the duo write that the map of West Bank “leaves little doubt regarding where Sharon received his inspiration.”

Illegal settlements

Pointing to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, the duo emphasized that the regime in Tel Aviv was inspired by South Africa’s Bantustan project, which was a product of racial and class discrimination propounded by the white with contempt against the black.

“The West Bank today consists of 165 ‘enclaves’ – that is, Palestinian communities encircled by territory taken over by the settlement enterprise.”

The Bantustans of South Africa under the apartheid regime and the map of the occupied Palestinian territories today, they emphasized, are based on the same idea of “concentrating the ‘undesirable’ population in as small an area as possible, in a series of non-contiguous enclaves.”

“By gradually driving these populations from their land and concentrating them into dense and fractured pockets, both South Africa then and Israel today worked to thwart political autonomy and true democracy,” wrote the former envoys.

‘Wake up, world’

Baruch and Liel argued that their time in post-apartheid South Africa had led them to learn firsthand about the “reality of apartheid and the horrors it inflicted,” calling on the world to stand up for Palestine as they did against apartheid in South Africa in the 1990s.

“It is time for the world to recognize that what we saw in South Africa decades ago is happening in the occupied Palestinian territories too,” they wrote.

“It is time for the world to take decisive diplomatic action in our case as well and work towards building a future of equality, dignity, and security for Palestinians and Israelis alike,” they hastened to add.

They also warn that the Israeli occupation was not temporary and that the Israeli regime had “no political will to end it.”

Liel, the Israeli regime’s envoy to South Africa during the transition from apartheid from 1992 to 1994, also served as the director-general of the regime’s foreign ministry between 2000 and 2001.

Baruch served as the ambassador to South Africa from 2005 to 2008. He also served as an envoy to Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe.

The damning article comes amidst the unfolding political drama in Israel with opposition political figures clubbing together to oust the sitting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu has been under fire at home after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas inflicted a crushing defeat on the regime during the recent 11-day war on the besieged Gaza Strip.

9 June 2021

Source: pnn.ps